Endless Night
by Deathofme
Summary: For Sanctuary Bingo Post Endless Nights Part 2. Helen/Druitt. When Druitt and Tesla wreaked havoc on the Cabal. John tries to find some way to mourn Ashley as he has his revenge, and for Helen to forgive him.


**A/N **For Sanctuary Bingo, prompt: Hurt/Comfort

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><p><strong>Endless Night<strong>

"Are you ready?"

Nikola nodded grimly and John took his arm. They vanished into the night air with a brilliant flash of orange light.

They reappeared in the middle of the main Cabal stronghold where Ashley had been experimented on. Tesla was already in vampiric form, his eyes black as midnight. John drew out his two knives, his anger simmering but feeling cold as ice.

The Cabal facility's security alarms rang three minutes after they entered, but it wasn't soon enough to save any of the operatives in the lab. When the gunfire began Tesla was in his element, riddled with bullets and laughing at their attempts. John was never still for longer than a second, disappearing and reappearing in a cold flash of steel, cutting his way through the doomed men.

He grabbed one by the collar of his shirt, pulling him onto the length of his blade. "Go on, scream," he whispered.

Tesla had ripped open the main circuit board and stuck his hand into the nest of wires. The facility exploded with overloaded lights and power was stripped away.

John moved about like a vengeful shadow in the darkness and after seventeen minutes everyone in the facility was dead. He stood amongst the carnage, chest heaving, and covered in blood.

Tesla walked slowly up towards him. "What now?"

John wiped his knives on the shirt of a slain Cabal member at his feet. "We find the rest."

His nights were filled with thoughts only of bloodshed, death and the desire to hear screaming. Every agonized, fearful cry he heard served to muffle the sound of the man shouting in his mind.

A week into his campaign for revenge, Tesla turned to him and asked, "Will any of this actually bring Ashley back?"

Druitt couldn't look at him and quietly muttered, "No."

"Does it help you sleep at night?"

"Have you seen me sleeping?"

The black rage in his mind reveled that he gave himself into it so completely. A small part of John felt that he was losing himself, but whenever he closed his eyes he could only see himself that night, his blade pierced through Ashley's torso as her eyes flickered from red to blue and a flash of recognition crossed her face. It haunted him.

He knew this wasn't the way to atone for himself or for anything he had done in the past, but it was the only way he knew how to grieve.

They were in a Cabal facility in Egypt when he felt a bullet tear into his stomach. He was running on too much adrenaline to feel any pain, but when the second and third bullets bit into him he knew he was in trouble.

Tesla grabbed his arm as he was still trying to raise his knife. "What are you doing, you lunatic? We have to go now!"

"Not until you're dead!" John bellowed at the man laying into him with an assault rifle. Growling, Tesla shielded John from the gunfire, the bullets ripping through his suit.

"Are you going to make Helen bury you too!" Nikola yelled. The words undid something in him, and John teleported them away from the fight.

He collapsed to the floor, his clothes soaked through with blood. He felt the pain now, a spell of dizziness making it hard for him to focus.

"Where are we?" He mumbled, unable to take in his surroundings.

"We're at the Sanctuary."

John woke later to find himself on the operating table. Helen was standing over him, putting in the last suture to close a wound on his chest.

"Helen…"

"Shhh, John, don't speak." She snipped the surgical thread and gently dabbed at the excess pinpricks of blood welling up through his stitches.

"I didn't mean to bring this to your door," he slurred.

She looked gently down at him, her eyes brilliant and glistening. "She's gone, John. You can stop now."

He closed his eyes, unable to speak. He felt her hand take his and gently caress it. It was the first, in a very long time, that they had held hands. "I'm not sorry I wasn't there … I meant that. To have been there the entire time she'd have grown up a very different, crueler person."

"No, John," Helen whispered as she stroked the side of his face.

"I'm mostly sorry that … I now have nothing I share with you."

He felt Helen's hand slip away and was glad his eyes were still closed. He couldn't bear seeing her walk away again. But instead he felt the table shift, and her warm weight settle beside him.

John opened his eyes and lifted his arm so that Helen could shift in beside him without disturbing his chest wound. He felt the blackness in him grow silent, giving him respite from its greedy rage for one night.

She whispered, "Ashley was the most important, but not the only thing we share." She lay there beside him and he drifted off to sleep where he was finally free from nightmares.

FIN


End file.
